Rails beta book and agile book publishing
Justin Gehtland blogs about getting the importance of getting the “last 20%” right when shipping a technical book - DHH’s and Dave Thomas’ approach with the beta Rails book is te best way to make sure and get that last 20 pefect before shipping. I agree completely and will go one step further - the agile book publishing system will become the general best practice in technical books in the same way TDD and continuous integration have become the best practice for software development. In five years from now I wouldn’t be surprised if O’Reilly and others embrace beta books as their primary publishing model.